🔌 DMS10 - Power Up! ⚡️

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

Thanks everyone who donated MO disks! We are now totally covered!

[@ACRPC-dot-NET]

I just mailed out the disk and drive I spoke to Peter about today 🙂

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

My next hardware project just HAS to have a "CATASTROPHIC ALARM!!!" indicator. Fabulous to see this project coming to life.

[@sheep1ewe]

Awesome to see You here! i hawe mad respect for Your builds!

[@MachiningandMicrowaves]

@@sheep1ewe This is one of my favourite channels without a doubt. One day I will find some old microwave telecomms link hardware, do a restoration and get it running. I used to work in telephone exchanges back in 1975, then worked with Ericsson MD110 switches in the 1990s, but it was the big old-school microwave links that were my favourites.

[@sheep1ewe]

@@MachiningandMicrowaves That sound awesome! I kind of collect old radio related telecom equipment my self, but mainly from the earlier pre 80s eras. I so badly whish there where more people like us where i live since almost nothing has been preserved here from the old telecom era, despite they even had a large cable relay station in the city whan i was a child, but it is all now just empty shells, i been inside there a few years ago but sadly there was nothing left of the relay stations but the marks from the ancorbolts in the floor. I am however glad they decided to preserve the building with the original exterior look.

[@Xsiondu]

Oh snap there's my favorite machinist. this must be why I was blessed with the recommendation for your channel. Awesome.

[@andrewc.2952]

This is too neat. I've always loved older tech that isn't really talked about. Everybody's focusing on old gaming systems but this is where it's at. Thanks so much for the channel and bringing things back to life.

[@ocsrc]

There are so few people in the country who know how the infrastructure works and keeps it running. You should feel very proud of all your work and knowledge. ❤

[@carpetbomberz]

So happy to see all the work, collecting, transporting, storing, assembling, rebuilding, documenting and now "BOOOT UPPPP"! This is a pretty good first time out, and sounds like DMS10 will have a new life at the Connections Museum. Congrats to one and all.

[@TonyAiuto]

"We're using a VT420 cuz that is what the machine would have originally shipped with" - I love that offhand attention to detail. A big round of applause to everyone involved in the re-animation.

[@tomschmidt381]

And the comment "serial interfaces never work the first time." That got a knowing chuckle from me.

[@TonyAiuto]

I have not made a serial cable since the 80s but the pinouts and baud/parity combinations are still burning in my memory.@@tomschmidt381

[@KanalFrump]

The aesthetic of that machine and its many module panels... feels like a previously unseen peak of late cassette futurism. Nice work preserving this stuff.

[@rogerhouston3209]

Shut down a few DMS100’s as our company abandoned local copper customers for fiber. The amperage came off the battery plant but capacitors held current for some time, after we verified it okay, some vendor would come & remove it. These were little CO’s at first, it got eerily quiet without all those fans spinning. And cold, these small buildings didn’t have heat, only air-conditioning, the switch itself warmed the place.

[@josugambee3701]

"Everything is fail." Ahh yes, the joys of hardware debugging! ;-)

[@robertlinder6414]

As a former SME for DMS-100 as a technician and manager, it's great to see this switch working

[@LeifES]

09:03 Minor, Major and Cathastrophic alarm. Only missing the Ludicrous alarm..

[@jfbeam]

That would be "smoke". 🙂

[@andromedaturnbull3512]

I bet that the "Catastrophic" alarm was probably named something like "Unrecoverable" to begin with ("hard" alarm fails that cannot be reset/cleared from within the running system such as critical I/O faults) only that as the software moved on, some of them gained recoverability.

[@andrewwyard9678]

1202 alarm, love it.

[@patrickcatpop]

Wow! I only just started watching your channel. When I make my next trip up to Seattle, I will put the museum on my itinerary.

[@sandy1653]

Nice job to get the old tank up and running again. We had the DMS10's big brother, the DMS500 (a DMS100 and a DMS250 combined) at an CLEC I worked for for the longest time. The thing was treated like it was some sort of holy artifact when I started and even had its own floor in the CO to itself. WHen I left it had mostly been supplanted by softswitches & VOIP and _nobody_ loved the poor DMS500 anymore. Though that may have been due to its propensity to randomly trip breakers for reasons nobody could ascertain.

[@maxpeck4154]

My first telecom job was a small CLEC in 1999 and we had a Lucent 5ESS. I was a field tech but knew my way around the basic feature menus for individual telephone lines and everyone I knew that had worked with a 5E and a DMS said they much preferred the DMS.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@maxpeck4154 I had just been reading up on ISDN and it seems the customer side was the other way -- sincere hope that your circuit lands on an ESS. ;-) Horses for courses, perhaps...

[@warphammer]

The thing about the 'back up from dark' instructions would be that... It's really not too bad to bring up the standby side of most of the systems on a DMS. If I were on site doing that I'd turn it over to the on duty switch techs at the NOC to just correct the standby alarms while you'd clean up the site. Not that we ever had anything like that in my short time working with these... Interesting you had an MO drive. Our MTX was backing up with one of the larger quarter inch tapes. See if you can find one of the Nortel branded HP thinkjets for the console printer. :D

[@johnnydollar2253]

400 series used quarter inch cartridges. 500 series introduced MO disks circa 2000.

[@cdtdoug]

Brings back lots of memories. Never worked on DMS-10 but got my career started working on DMS SuperNode back in the early 1990's at the BNR Ottawa Carling campus. Used to walk up and down the isles in the lab just wondering what it all did. Don't remember much of it so I'm watching this series very carefully. Saw ENET messages fly by on the boot up so it's not that different.

[@iffyrules]

My first job out of school was with a Nortel joint venture whose business was essentially extending the line card shelf over hybrid fober-coax so cable companies could offer phone service. We used to have a DMS-10 and DMS-100 in the lab. It's been a long time since I'd seen one. Thanks for the video!

[@colinstu]

Excited to see the journey on combing through this beast and extinguishing those alarms.

[@der.Schtefan]

My home town in Austria ran these. we talked about them on a tour with the engineering school when we visited the telephone exchange ca 1997. They said "we got these from Canada". It took me until last year to connect the dots, that it was Nortel.

[@ShainAndrews]

Nortel was literally more than 50% of Canada's retirement investment fund. Not an exaggeration... look it up. Absolute telecom monster back in the day.

[@der.Schtefan]

@@ShainAndrews I saw BobbyBroccoli's video about the scandals on this.

[@MeriaDuck]

1:51 Fans!? Yes, here's one, big fan of this channel 😂❤ That orange phone with tack board, lovely!

[@demipan5111]

Does anyone know what that phone is? We'd love to get one!

[@St0rmcrash]

@@demipan5111 It's called the Noteworthy. The handset is a Trimline and the cork board is reversible to a chalkboard

[@boballmendinger3799]

We actually have three types of alarms; critical, major, minor. I assume catastrophic was the DMS 10 version of critical. Great job turning it up!

[@jfbeam]

"critical" === could blow up. "catastrophic" === _has_ blown up.

[@lpbkdotnet]

I love how quickly you’re making progress with this one, breathing life back into a machine like that is not a small job at all!

[@JimmytheCow2000]

Thank you so much for this update! I had a great time when I visited for my birthday in January. Looks like I need to get back up there and visit again. Congratulations on the boot!

[@sheep1ewe]

Your channel did quickly go from someting i taught i would find mildly interesting to one of my top ten favorite channels i watch every single video ever since i watched the very first video here! Always looking forward to a new video!

[@sundhaug92]

6:06 "1202 alarm" that's the kind of nerdery you just gotta appreciate (the 1202 alarm was a program alarm in the Apollo Guidance Computer experienced during with the Lunar Guidance Computer of Apollo 11 during landing)

[@CandyGramForMongo_]

You’re wearing a jean jacket with patches and a Rush t-shirt! That was my wardrobe back in 1983! 😂😂😂😂😊

[@RobertWCrouch]

I was actually surprised how new the system is. The discussions around bring-up and alarm states makes it sound closer to the Apollo program. The industrial level redundancy and diagnostics is pretty crazy (but understandable).

[@marcd6897]

I thought exactly the same !

[@torchris1]

NTPs! I used to write those! 😂

[@warphammer]

I used to love reading them. You'd go back in time from the high quality slickly formatted stuff back through to photocopies of dot matrix printouts that were sometimes, uh... highly informal.

[@AlistairGale]

BCS - Bad Canadian Software ❤

[@wb2vsj]

​@@AlistairGale Ha! That's what we called it too. I was in the Nortel/BNR XPM test group for the DMS-100 and DMS-10. BNR stood for Big Nerd Ranch.

[@antronargaiv3283]

Fascinating episode, Colin and Sarah! Nice to see the DMS 10 coming alive, a tremendous accomplishment. I noticed, at the end of the video, that the circuit breaker that wouldn't stay on had been fixed...where was the short? +1 for the Daria patch, Sarah, and if you need help getting the Ethernet up, just send me a ticket and I'll fly out and help! :-)

[@colinslater195]

When we tried it again in the afternoon, it just held. No intervention required, not sure what the issue was.

[@stanleymeskys5435]

The telecom I work for still has 40 or so of these running with and without SDMs. We also still run DMS100, 250S, 500S from Nortel. We have quite a few LUCENT 5E, Siemens EWSDs, old DCOs, and some newer switches like the Genband G9. They are lol slowly being decommed for Meta and Perimeta VOIP switches. Parts are getting too hard to find for the older switches. As a side note I live 2 blocks away from the old Rochester, NY Nortel headquarters.

[@gregaluise5727]

Congratulations to a wonderful team! Glad to see you got the DMS so much further along! You all are the best! Only regret from my trip to Seattle: not having the nerve to ask for a photo with you all!

[@dillonbray]

A decade ago I worked with as a CO tech for small telephone company that had a remaining DMS10 at one of its locations. Luckily I didn't have to do much with that switch as the site was pretty quickly converted over to a Nortel CS1500 (Genband C15). It amazed me how a room full of switching equipment was reduced to a single rack of equipment. One day I hope to make it to your museum, its incredible being able to preserve this equipment.

[@traindoctor]

So excited to have been even a minor part of the process!

[@techniker1337]

Spent some time in Unity, Maine working on a Nortel DMS-100. This video brought back some good old memories. I've always been fond on making two physical devices communicate over a distance. No matter the age of the technology, the idea is the same and I love it all the same!

[@mistermac56]

Great to see the DMS-10 fired up. It is going to be fun and interesting to watch the team get it fully operational.

[@garry4086]

You might want to go to the Dayton Hamvention in Ohio May 17-20. While there is a large radio focus there I have seen a ton of old parts and telephone equipment there in the past. You may find the disks you are looking for and a lot of other stuff you can use at great prices. There is a HUGE electronics flea market there

[@boballmendinger3799]

Sounds cool! Haven't been to it since around 1986...

[@edwinsinclair9853]

Nortel switches and fiber optic multiplexers were usually fairly reliable. Where I worked at Telmar Network Technologies, we built our own test lab to test telecommunication ckt. packs. We put together a 5-ESS switch, a Nortel DMS100, Tellabs 5500 DACS, and a complete Nortel OC-48 fiber optic ring. Also we built our own -48 and +130 volt power plant. Also of course NEC optical mux. equip. RC-28 and NEC 405s.

[@Starlite123]

Very very soon that stuff is going away in the c.o.

[@stealth210]

Great addition to the collection! Thanks for the thoughtful video documentation of the initial pickup from Adtran and this next milestone of the cold start. I managed a Nortel Option 61C in the 2000s (baby to DMS 10/100 for sure).

[@michaeltidbury4835]

Brilliant progress - well done everyone. You are my favourite telephone guys 😍.

[@fluffyty19]

The boot process explanation being Step 1: apply power Step 2: did it come up? Step 3: if yes, cool! Step 3A: if not, panic! was hilarious 😂 Awesome that it’s up and running. Can’t wait to see it fully working and switching. What an awesome project and kudos to all of you at the museum!

[@AlistairGale]

Happened to me once, commercial power was disrupted by an excavator, backup generator was undersized to maintain cooling and site power. We did backups and prayed that it would come back up 😵‍💫

[@MrTherende]

It's great fun to see the other half of Nortel. I worked on the data/LAN side as a Systems Engineer and my colleagues would go on about the DMS's and I was pretty clueless.

[@AlistairGale]

I remember being in Raleigh (RTP) in the late 80s for DMS training when Baby Jessica fell in the well. ( don’t worry she’s a ripe old 37 by now). Think I have a bit slice CPU board from one of our 10’s Someone should do a history of switching in Barbados from the Northern Electric xbars in the 70s, then DMS-10s, DMS-100/200, DMS-MTX and line concentrators. Until the whole lot was replaced by a single(?) Genband soft switch.

[@MrTherende]

@@AlistairGale I was down at RTP in the early '90's when I was still with DEC to learn how to use Unix (I was a VMS person). RTP was an amazing place. I remember sitting in the hotel bar when Bush Sr. announced we were going into Kuwait. Interesting times.

[@AlistairGale]

@@MrTherende A bit before your time, we used to chill in the hotel bar and watch (the original) Battlestar Galactica with our Iranian bartender, we also absolutely refused any offers of seafood restaurants from our instructor.

[@CheapSushi]

From a hardware design aesthetic appreciation perspective, I just love the vertical slot mounting, with buttons and LEDs. Just looks plain cool.

[@area73blog]

Part of me really wants to play with something like this :) I did get to work around a switch about 25 years ago, when the ISP I worked at briefly became a LEC. I can't remember exactly what type it was though.

[@esra_erimez]

This is so interesting. Thank you for sharing.

[@kencarlile1212]

Awesome that it's starting to come back to life. Lotta hard work we didn't see, I'm guessing. :D

[@ducksauz]

Congratulations! This is very cool to see.

[@sydneybiscuit]

I'm loving this series so much! 10/10 (:

[@xyzrandom3981]

Congratulations y'all!

[@wysoft]

I work with a gentleman who used to work for Nortel installing DMS-10 systems all around the SE US and the Caribbean. I got the opportunity to check out this beast in the museum last month and he enjoyed seeing the photos of it. Great work over there edit: I realize now the powerup was the day I was at the museum. I recognize one of the guests in the video, ha I also didn't realize that the DMS-10 error output looks suspiciously like that of the Meridian systems. Obviously there is a common heritage here but I wonder how much of that knowledge translates over to the DMS-10. At this point I only have to keep Meridians alive until the darkness falls onto the remainder of their sad existence

[@garthhowe297]

Great work. That's an intimidating piece of equipment.

[@joedygert4362]

nice job brings back memory's

[@TheThethinker101]

Super cool!! What all do you plan to demo/exhibit with the switch once it is up and running? Would be amazing have a working display of early home internet services such as dial up and ISDN.

[@PaulLoveless-Cincinnati]

Absolutely love the "Catastrophic" alarm indication.

[@five-toedslothbear4051]

This was particularly interesting because the company I worked for once had a Nortel switch like that; it might have been a DMS-10. My manager at the time was formerly an executive with a telecom company attached to a major university, and had converted them to running their own phone system. I think our system replaced a Centrex setup. It must have been installed in the early 1990s. Eventually it was replaced with a VoIP box-on-the-wall system, and now we're fully remote, so we don't really have company phones anyway. It was a lot of fun to learn more about telecom stuff, and my boss would explain what was happening and show me things. Most definitely I must visit sometime. I'm mentally ranking visiting the Connections Museum with going to Japan...both are way up there, but forgive me if seeing the museum is a little below riding the Shinkansen.

[@joshkarpoff3341]

The indicator LED gives vibes of the light on the Gargantua 1 space station's mainframe on the "Venture Bros." cartoon series. As an electronics engineer myself, one who much prefers hardware over software, one of my bucket list items is to design a piece of equipment with a really vague, cryptic, but still panic inducing error indicator light that isn't really documented. This way subsequent generations will get to experience the same fear, anxiety and frustrations we all got to go through working with technology that was before the ubiquity of screens on every piece of equipment. The nightmare of trying to hear was that 3 beeps followed by 2 beeps or was that actually 5 beeps. Things of that nature.

[@krnlg]

Haha yes - if the alarm needs to be alarming, why not unsettling too? 😅

[@noisytim]

That is so cool! I can’t wait to see more of this behemoth of a machine :D

[@JoeHamelin]

Kudos Colin and team! 🤎

[@lordmuntague]

Outstanding, well done indeed. 👍

[@tomschmidt381]

Great initial power up, always good when there is no magic smoke.

[@litz13]

I've been involved in a complete data center blackout. Bringing an entire server infrastructure (for an Enterprise sized business) back online from Cold And Dark is just as tricky and time intensive. There really isn't a manual for it other than "pray" and "think creatively" (and swear creatively, too)

[@jfbeam]

There's no manual, because it's all in our heads. Once everything is back online, it's never a priority to document the bootstrap process.

[@user-nd8zh3ir7v]

Thank you. Awesome video

[@MarkEichin]

I think it's great that you all sound like you're really familiar with this hardware at a professional level - but also like the hardware is *older* than any of you are :-)

[@SnakebitSTI]

6:02 Roger. We got - We're GO on that alarm

[@diverscuba23]

Ahh... The DMS-10. The first product that I worked on as a coop in collage... good to see some of the design stuff I worked on still there. Did you ever get the telnet terminal to work on it?

[@musiqtee]

You guys are just awesome…! 🤓👍 (CuriousMark & team also comes to mind…)

[@L0op]

I swear I felt you upload this one, literally yesterday I went "huh, wonder what the Connection Museum peeps are up to"

[@RickTheGeek]

Interestingly, the number 3 crossbar has listed in its CDs regarding the alarms, a "calamity alarm" in addition to the MJ and MN alarms. It was designed to report the alarms electronically to a centralized alarm center.

[@chancewolf3739]

Lol. Someone says '1202 Alarm!'. #peaknerd. But in the good way. Great video.

[@KJ7BZC]

Man this is so interesting to follow, really looking forward to seeing it complete calls. I would love to eventually see how the CLI is structured on this switch or the 3ESS for that matter.

[@gwesco]

When I worked on 81-C's, the overlays were sort of pre-populated and you added variables as they prompted you. Originally OVL-10 was analog phones, OVL-11 was digital sets, OVL-14 was trunks, etc. I loved the BARS and NARS overlays and did some really creative call routing as we had multiple switches in multiple cities networked together.

[@NLind]

Interestingly I was thinking about the Major Alarm chime a few minutes before you showed it!

[@liquidsonly]

You got the matching chair too!

[@binarydinosaurs]

This is awesome, though I'm sat here thinking 'hey it's brown and orange so it must be late 70s' but no, it shipped with a VT420 so that means late 90s, then Sarah says it's from 2000 and I'm going 'huh, only a few years ago.' No. 24 years ago. Ye gods. I love this stuff.

[@windekind27]

That only leaves one pre-voip era 'big' switch to aquire to complete the museum... the 5ESS.

[@Egress.]

There’s already a 5ESS at the museum. Kinda… it’s an active switch in a room adjacent to the one the dms-10/3ESS are in. You can peek through a window in one of the doors and see it sometimes.

[@kreuner11]

​@@Egress.Once it's retired we know where it'll go

[@boballmendinger3799]

Three. DMS 100, 5ESS, Siemens EWSD. Oooh, and a 4ESS!

[@Egress.]

do we count a 5EAX? @@boballmendinger3799

[@stanleymeskys5435]

Don’t forget the DCO

[@niv8880]

Is it not worth pointing out in the intro that the Nortel DMS-10, also known as the Digital Multiplex System-10, was the world's first commercially successful Class 5 digital switch in the North American market having a significant impact on the telecommunications industry. Just wondered as I drifted here and wasn't sure what I was looking at to begin with.

[@TeslaTales59]

Nice work on this project!

[@athompso99]

The VT420 didn't hit the Canadian market until ca.1988, and IIRC the DMS10 predates that noticeably. The VT320 or even VT220 would seem to be more likely craft consoles to be bundled with the DMS10.

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

This DMS is from 2001! They upgraded the terminals as time went on 😊

[@athompso99]

@@ConnectionsMuseum How? The DMS-10 was introduced in *1977* ?!?!? If this was a DMS-100 (which it looks like to me, at least it strongly resembles the one I worked beside for a decade) then the timeline makes sense but otherwise, what am I missing? (To be fair, ALL BN/Nortel CO gear kinda looks the same, across a 30yr timeframe, but still.)

[@jfbeam]

@@athompso99 _what am I missing_ The fact this DMS was built in 2001 and came with a newer terminal. The output to the terminal had not changed, 'tho. (i.e. a VT52 or 100 would also work.)

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

@@athompso99 it’s a DMS-10 and it was the last one to roll off the Nortel assembly line. The people who originally purchased it from Nortel gave us its backstory.

[@athompso99]

@@ConnectionsMuseum ok! Wow, I would never have thought production lasted that long, esp since the -200 effectively replaced it (I think). Thanks for the info!

[@andresrvlife1386]

poor thing.. it's lonely.. it cannot talk to all the computers it used to talk to. give it some new friends to talk to 🙂

[@bretwashere]

I think Sarah is very smart and bright in relation to telephony. I work as a telecommunications engineer, and I'm very impressed.

[@VectraQS]

I think my parents have that exact orange office chair. Given the lengthy bootup time, will this switch be left on 24/7, or will it only be powered on for special occasions? Can't wait to put a call through it once you get it onto CNET.

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

It stays on 24/7

[@VernGraner]

Is it possible to both love and hate at the same time? YES. I both love these video but hate the rabbit holes I go down! Astonishing how FUN and TIME CONSUMING this old tech is! arg!!! 😁😂🤣

[@Starlite123]

Wow amazing how much differenet the interface is to a DMS-100.

[@warphammer]

IIRC it shouldn't be. This is down in the sort of... I used to call it the CLI mode, I forget what the official name was. This is where you'd generally do serious hardware stuff (like disk configuration, patching, swapping primary and secondary CPU....) The little ASCII semi-gui I think is also available on a -10.

[@Starlite123]

@@warphammer At least in my working DMS-100 the gui was like the Nortel Transport eq. pretty easy some hidden(lots of hidden comands) with most commands listed. You can use MAPCI in the terminal to start the guis in these. I would start the gui with MAPCI;LTP;LTA;LNS to get into line test and DN info etc.

[@johnnydollar2253]

No, the menu system is not available in the 10. The 10 and 100 are very different switches by the same company. Several DMS100 peripherals (LCE, SCE frames, DCI shelves) were adapted into the 10, but that's it.

[@Starlite123]

@@johnnydollar2253 Got it :)

[@lucaspod]

I have to come to Seattle to see all this. If you ever get a dms100 I could do this in my sleep. The LCME frame is well within my scope of expertise too. You will not get rid of the critical alarm until you remove or offline the customer facing equipment that is part of the database. The best thing would be to offline the equipement

[@johnnydollar2253]

The CPU is not in network 0/1. The CPU is in Core 0/1. You need to keep in mind that the CNI combines control and network bays into a single module. In the CE-3 bay, the bus extenders are the dividing line. The left side bus extender is part of the Core (lower shelf is 0, upper shelf is 1). The right two bus extenders are part of the network. The left of the pair (the middle most) is associated with Core 0 bus and the right one is associated with Core 1 bus. This is for both shelves. You can get yourself into trouble by just pulling all of the bus extenders on the same shelf thinking you've got the shelf disabled in 1BUS. Oops, switch just init'd...

[@colinslater195]

Ah that clarifies the different bus extenders a lot, thanks. There are so many redundant paths in this system that it has taken us a while to figure out exactly what links up with what. Time for a more careful read through the documents!

[@arbutuswatcher]

Introduce rain water to the line drawers, and chaos becomes the pain that never leaves the office. Tarps over the switch & buckets below is the new normal.

[@atubebuff]

For some reason I wasn't expecting you to have a concentrated network interface like a GR303 which is really only about 20 years old. Unless you're connecting it to a Nortel subscriber access you might have to deal with "misunderstanding" between GR303 versions for various manufacturers.

[@jfbeam]

I started watching this saying "this is something that normally happens *ONCE* in the lifetime of the machine." And even then, it was done by Nortel engineers. I've only seen this in passing once. (and it ended up in a wood chipper a few years later, after the power company's stupid attempt to be an ISP/telco _totally_ imploded. as far a I know, they never fully paid for that DMS.) So, are you prepared to keep this thing powered 24/7 for the next 50 years? This isn't something you can power up every weekend for tourists. The telco / ISP I worked for 20 years ago went to sell one of the long distance switches (Alcatel 600E). When Alcatel got word of this, there were numerous calls from them basically screaming if we turn it off they'll never certify it ever again. The only way to sell it is to sell the building it's sitting in -- without turning the power off. (that was a problem, as we couldn't sell the entire Manhattan CO.)

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

Yep, it stays on 24/7. It's on for good now. Funny, ours was originally purcahsed by a power co-op in Texas who wanted to start offering dial up and DSL services in the late 90s. Just a few years later, this DMS-10 was replaced with a Metaswitch or a Genband something-or-other, and it was sold to Adtran for use in their lab.

[@Richardpasquinucci]

do you have any NorTel TOPS operator terminals?

[@proudsnowtiger]

My life has needed a CATASTROPHIC annunciator since forever, I just didn't realise it until now. And is that an actual Telstar on the shelf at 9:22, just sitting there?

[@colincantlie1108]

Any plans to get yourself a DMS-100 someday? I did software development on them as did a lot of my friends at Bell-Northern Research (BNR) and Nortel here in Ottawa Ontario. The main Nortel Ottawa campus at Carling Avenue and Moodie Drive (3500 Carling) is now National Defence Headquarters (70 Moodie Drive) with a really impressive exterior fence.

[@debrainwasher]

When I see this noisy DMS10 monster, where I always would fear, there might be a lift off, I am quite happy with 3CX- and Asterisk-Phone Exchange systems. One server can theoretically serve about 1 million SIP-phones loads of trunks and many, many other features. With a suitable Internet connection everybody could operate a private SIP phone company. Provided, he gets a three-digit trunk prefix from the phone regulator of his country. Even analog phones are possible by using ATA-boxes.

[@bobhillier921]

Catastrophic failure. In 1986, I found the Y2K bug which resulted in every DMS100 system crashing and rebooting. Almost 1 hr later, the switch was backup. Catastrophic means calls dropped and calls not processed!

[@robhester7087]

where in TEXAS WAS THIS SWITCHED REMOVED?

[@MVHens]

I only know DMS II from Unisys. Can you add a little background and main purpose of this kind of machine. Is this something a major telephone operator would use?

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

Most telephone switches are what major telephone operators used to use. That's kind of the point of the museum. There are some small ones that were only used at very small exchanges like remote villages.

[@robinsparrow1618]

new connections video? with fluffy hair?? hell yeah!

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

That is nuts!

[@kevinsadowy5602]

"I don't know how to get out of Catastrophic Alarm Mode yet" Talk about a meme for modern times. 😂

[@Dsschuh]

I always thought it was just the one or two of you in the video working on things - there is a raft of people!

[@zuur303]

Mister Hammond, I think we're in business!

[@harveyellis6758]

@10:57 it is suggested that DMS10 would have interfaced with a TTY (or teletype) in the 1970s. The Nortel DMS10 was not manufactured until mid 1980s and typically had a DEC VT100 as serial interface device for switch maintenance and operations.

[@ConnectionsMuseum]

The first DMS10 was installed in Florida in 1978

[@shaunbeckman434]

Hard to believe the DMS-10 was the predecessor of the CS-1500 (later known as Genband C15)